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Well, first of all, I'm not arguing for equal pay for everyone, I'm in favor of a guarenteed minimum income. Secondly, money doesn't work as a motivator for non

by gambogi 13y ago

Well, first of all, I'm not arguing for equal pay for everyone, I'm in favor of a guarenteed minimum income. Secondly, money doesn't work as a motivator for non menial tasks.[1] And you know, a task that seems boring and uninteresting to you might not for someone else. As for how many of us would even develop software at all, I need only point to the open source community. Extrinsic notivation has its place, but it is no substitute for that internal drive. [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

jiggy2011 13y ago
I don't think it's true that money doesn't work as a motivation for non-menial tasks, if that were the case then there would be no incentive for tech companies to offer developers anything over a sustenance wage since they would show up to work for free. Open source software is an interesting example, but I think it mostly supports my case. If you look at the projects out there, you can divide them into roughly 3 camps. 1) Projects that have a lot of paid developers working for companies or organisations that pay wages to their developers. So stuff like Android , V8 and Ubuntu would fall into this camp. 2) Projects that people were not necessarily paid to develop , but were developed mostly as a biproduct of something that they were or as a way to do that thing more effectively. "Scratch an itch" software effectively. I guess something like RoR would fall into this category. 3) Pure passion projects that were developed for fun. This is the only group that is purely intrinsically motivated. The thing with projects that fall into camp #3 is that they tend to be stuff that the developer themselves found useful or interesting rather than something that necessarily serves society at large, though the two may sometimes intersect there is no guarantee. If you don't make peoples incomes at least somewhat dependant upon the software they develop you will see far more camp #3 projects than camps #1 or #2.

by gambogi 13y ago

jiggy2011 13y ago

I don't think it's true that money doesn't work as a motivation for non-menial tasks, if that were the case then there would be no incentive for tech companies to offer developers anything over a sustenance wage since they would show up to work for free. Open source software is an interesting example, but I think it mostly supports my case. If you look at the projects out there, you can divide them into roughly 3 camps. 1) Projects that have a lot of paid developers working for companies or organisations that pay wages to their developers. So stuff like Android , V8 and Ubuntu would fall into this camp. 2) Projects that people were not necessarily paid to develop , but were developed mostly as a biproduct of something that they were or as a way to do that thing more effectively. "Scratch an itch" software effectively. I guess something like RoR would fall into this category. 3) Pure passion projects that were developed for fun. This is the only group that is purely intrinsically motivated. The thing with projects that fall into camp #3 is that they tend to be stuff that the developer themselves found useful or interesting rather than something that necessarily serves society at large, though the two may sometimes intersect there is no guarantee. If you don't make peoples incomes at least somewhat dependant upon the software they develop you will see far more camp #3 projects than camps #1 or #2.